Lawyers around the world who truly believe in the rule of law and democratic principles must be taken aback by actions and threats against their colleagues in the United States.  President Donald Trump’s crackdown on lawyers is having a chilling effect on his opponents’ ability to defend themselves or challenge his actions in court.

Officials of the Biden era say they are having trouble finding lawyers willing to defend them.  The result is an extraordinary threat to the fundamental constitutional rights of due process and legal representation.

Trump has used executive orders to target powerful law firms that have challenged him.  The latest came this week against Jenner and Block, which employed attorney Andrew Weissmann after he worked as a prosecutor with Robert S. Mueller, a special counsel investigating Trump in his first term.

According to a White House official, the firm “has participated in the weaponization of the legal system against American principles and values.  And we believe that the measures in this executive order will help correct that.”

The orders have sought to strip law firms of their business by banning their lawyers from government buildings and barring companies that have federal contracts from employing the firms.

Imagine if a government of The Bahamas took such actions against lawyers?  What would the people of the U.S. State Department say in their report on The Bahamas?

Trump last week ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to expand the campaign beyond individual law firms by sanctioning lawyers who “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against his administration.

Imagine if a Prime Minister in The Bahamas made such an order to sanction members of the legal fraternity?  What would be the response of The Bahamas Bar Association?  Indeed, what is the American Bar saying about this?

Legal scholars in the U.S. say there is little precedent in modern history for Trump’s actions.  But the president is following a playbook from other countries whose leaders sought to undermine democratic systems and the rule of law, including Russia, Turkey and Hungary.  Leaders in those countries have similarly attacked lawyers with the effect of hollowing out a pillar of justice systems to expand their power without violating existing laws.  They have successfully used the strategy to blast away their political opposition and any effort to counter their actions through courts.

Trump told his Cabinet in a meeting last Monday, “the law firms have to behave themselves.  They behave very badly, very wrongly.”   Imagine that!

The first White House action against lawyers came late last month, when Trump stripped the security clearances of lawyers at a prominent firm, Covington and Burling, who represented former special counsel Jack Smith after he investigated the president’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The following week, he took far harsher actions against Perkins Coie, a law firm that had ties to a dossier of opposition research against Trump that was circulated during the 2016 campaign.  The executive order barred the firm’s lawyers from federal buildings and directed the federal government to halt any financial relationship with the firm and its clients.  That effectively forced Perkins Coie’s clients to pick between their lawyers or any federal government business they might have.

The sweeping campaign is targeting the livelihoods of the people best qualified to contest the legality of Trump’s agenda.  Lawyers must now contend with the possibility that they could face lawsuits, fines and other punishment aimed at them and even their other clients should they contest the Trump administration’s efforts in court.

Trump’s actions toward lawyers have been about disabling effective representation of anyone that Trump doesn’t like, and that is the beginning of the end of the adversarial system in which both sides of a legal case have equal access to present their views in front of a judge.

Trump’s actions amount to a broad-based assault on the legal profession.  He has gone against lawyers, next will be trade unions and other professions.   Imagine what will be in the next report on democracy by the State Department.  You probably will never see a line about that.